15 ms·

Why I stopped using an external monitor

141 points by glenngillen 4y ago

sublinear 4y ago
I strongly prefer having only one screen no larger than 19 inches with a pixel density between about 110ppi and 150ppi. Why? Neck and eye strain with all other configurations I've tried. Also small font sizes really shine when the pixels are that large.
IYasha 4y ago
> I found the amount of those stuck at 1366x768 to be quite shocking. Hi, one of those here! Life is okay at lower resolution. But definitely not getting better because of ... designers. Low resolution also means less computing and less energy, so lots of portable devices will have it for a long time.
rhaway84773 4y ago
I think of all the people who have/might ditch an external author, the specific OP here has the best use case. UX/UI designers are definitely #1 among the people who should use computers in a way closer to their target audience. But also using a tiling window manager makes using a tiny single monitor extremely effective. 1. There is almost no wasted space. Almost the entire space is used for your content. It maximizes screen space better than any other paradigm there. 2. Automatic and effective filing meant I was far more likely to open windows besides each other much more rapidly (and way more conveniently) than I could arrange windows between monitors. 3. I haven’t used DWM, but i3 instead, and it was the only software where multiple desktops actually felt almost as effective as having actual multiple windows. The low graphical requirements of tiling window managers (I’m pretty sure their rendering is way faster because the display is so much simpler) meant that they could render a new workspace faster than I could turn my head from 1 monitor to another, and easy KB shortcuts made it ridiculously easy to switch between desktops. Let’s say I was copying 1 document’s text manually to another, it was probably quicker for me to type, hit Alt+2 read what I needed to copy next, hit Alt+1 to go back to the writing workspace and continue typing, than it was for me to type, turn my head to the other monitor, read, and then turn my head back to the 1st monitor to continue typing.
marvel_boy 4y ago
I can't agree more. Sure, there are legit uses for a huge screen (displaying several windows at the same time), but the developer need to focus, focus , focus.
- faeyanpiraat 4y ago
  Nothing can break focus more for me than constantly having to switch between windows (e.g.: vscode / chrome). 2 monitors are the way to go for me.
  - The_Colonel 4y ago
    Yes, there are many cases where a lot of space is needed. Like three-way merge ideally needs triple the width of normal code. There are many other use cases - keeping the jenkins build in peripheral vision, having terminal open with running logs, having browser open containing reference / documentation etc. Switching windows is a productivity killer.
  - dpkirchner 4y ago
    For me it's ultrawide. I'm using a 34" display at 3440x1440. I can have two "full size" windows side-by-side. (Full size meaning they each feel about as large as they did on my 15" MacBook display).
  - dt3ft 4y ago
    3 work the best for me. Debugging an API on monitor 1, VSCode on monitor 2, browser with the frontend rendered on 3. I could also use a 4th for the browser dev console. (Full stack development)
CSSer 4y ago
I'm still kind of at a loss. Why not just exclusively use the laptop screen as the development monitor and the larger monitor for... everything else?
- iamben 4y ago
  ...or just resize a browser window.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Because op found a solution (a tiling window manager) and then needed to find a problem.
    - alpaca128 4y ago
      Dwm can be nice to use, but like 99% of tiling window managers it's a dynamic one and after years of use I find those rather impractical. I don't get the appeal of every window on screen rearranging and resizing just because I opened a terminal, it's more chaotic than anything else. My favorite so far was stumpwm, which lets you statically split the screen in any way and then have a stack of windows in every segment. Works fine on every display size or number, all windows are neatly arranged according to their purpose and size requirements and just as much flexibility for keybindings. Though nowadays I use Mac OS and it's...fine. What's actually important is how smoothly it lets you switch windows.
geocrasher 4y ago
This article is a good reminder that there is no such thing as one-size-fits-all. His setup would be horrible for me. I currently have three 1920x1080 monitors in an L configuration (two in the middle, one to the right) and it works great for me- because I need to see a lot of windows at once. I tell everyone I work with "you need at least two monitors" because for our work, it's true. Clearly a different case with OP.
- stepbeek 4y ago
  I guess it’s true: there is no generalization that’s absolutely true including this one.
- VBprogrammer 4y ago
  Very generally, what is your work? If some part of it is "monitoring", maybe some metrics or live orders of some kind then having it permanently on another monitor is a no brainer. I generally do all my work on one screen and keep email / teams / Spotify on the laptop screen.
  - geocrasher 4y ago
    I work in the high end managed WordPress industry as Customer Success Manager. At any moment I have Slack, Tickets, Live Chat, Shell to several servers, and my server monitoring system up. ADHD means "out of sight out of mind" and so it's all visible all the time.
    - JohnBooty 4y ago
      ADHD means "out of sight out of mind" You know, it's funny. I believe I'm similar to you in this department. I use a giant 4K monitor as an ADHD mitigation tool. But I used to work with another guy. Also ADHD. And he said he absolutely had to restrict himself to smaller, single screens, in order to focus because looking at multiple windows at once was anathema to his ADHD. Just doubly reinforces how unique brains are. Even with the same diagnosis, different strategies.
CoBE10 4y ago
I have a similar setup to this, with a Thinkpad x230 and a budget 1600x900 HP monitor, and I also use dwm. The second monitor allows me to work with items that I don't need to interact with frequently. For example, I can display the PDF output of a LaTeX document on one monitor while keeping vim and a PDF of a book I'm reading on the other monitor. If I only had one monitor, my productivity would suffer because I would have to constantly switch between windows.
Invictus0 4y ago
Waiting for the article about why he downgraded his camera to a moldy potato
- dt3ft 4y ago
  The title is pure clickbait. If he switched to the moldy potato, I bet we’d all click to read that article too. Our human curiosity is weird :)
- precompute 4y ago
  Waiting for the article about how "HN is dying"
acdha 4y ago
I stopped when I switched to a 5K iMac. 5120x2880 is enough for things like side by side browsers and editors, and I use the excellent Rectangle app to easily align them in perfect ½, ⅓, or ¼ width of the screen (I use Firefox’s excellent responsive design mode for exactly matching client devices).
jrm4 4y ago
Nice, I like this idea here. Broadly, even though my main is a 27" 4K, I now more or less can't stand using two monitors, except for specific use cases where it "makes sense," e.g. when I teach classes online, and I need "my space" vs "what the students are seeing."
kraftman 4y ago
I have to switch from my 43" screen to my 15" laptop when travelling and I always hate it. I find it so much more productive to have everything open at once and not have to tab between windows.
zwkrt 4y ago
Its funny. I have programmed for a decade and at no point I have ever found that an external monitor was the solution to my problems. My coworkers think I'm crazy, but I do all development on a 15' macbook. My path to efficiency and ergonomic work has always been to become more familiar with the keyboard shortcuts for navigating windows and tabs. Along with Spectacle, Vimium, and tree-style tabs, I have never wanted for a second monitor. Mostly I find it annoying because I forget where I put my applications if I have two monitors. My overall mantra at work is that I can only do one thing a a time if I want to do it well. I feel in a sense limiting myself to one viewport helps reinforce this behavior.
- cfiggers 4y ago
  Where did you find a MacBook with a 15 foot screen???? No wonder you don't need a second monitor, good grief
- jfarina 4y ago
  Where did you find a laptop with a fifteen foot screen?
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Frank got it when he sold his 2000 inch TV.
  - reshie 4y ago
    not to mention being able to rotate it which portrait feels better with code and nice as a secondary dedicated.
  - IncRnd 4y ago
    It's on the macbook flair, which is a foldable cell phone with a keyboard. Developers have learned about the power and low cost for this machine and have started to use it as a laptop. The multiple folds of the screen and keyboard are what allow the flair's 15 foot footprint to be carried around in a phone's form factor. I have one of the original 16 core versions of these. Come to find out, Apple has recently released 80 and 128 core versions of the flair, so I may need to upgrade next year for the additional horsepower to run data models.
oystersauce8 4y ago
Being an expert window switcher is very empowering to me, much more than lots of monitors. I use keyboard maestro, several hotkeyed window layouts
cmdrk 4y ago
Personally, I use a single 38" curved monitor (3480x1600). I have old man eyes but this allows me to have up to 4 vertically split tmux panes with at least 80 cols in each pane for programming in vim. I find multi-monitor very distracting, but I'd never go back to a single 1080p screen at this point.
qiller 4y ago
For a long while I used just the 15"/16" MacBook without any external displays. I find multiple displays to be bad for my concentration or my neck and eyes (too much movement...) For web development, Chrome's responsive design mode with free viewport scaling is great - like testing a 4K TV display resolution in a half of a browser window. Wish Firefox had a similar scaling mode...
phendrenad2 4y ago
I used to have triple 4k monitors, but sold them after the layoffs and paid rent instead. So far I'm not missing them much.
wanderingmind 4y ago
The more you have customizable tools, the less is the need for larger or more monitors. I used to feel crippled if I don't have two large monitors, but after starting to use i3 and customizing it to my needs, I'm quiet comfortable with a single external monitor to do most work. It has been a great tool for improving my productivity.
Avlin67 4y ago
you obviously cannot use a 48 inch 4K monitor. but for me I think that 4K on large display offers so much space and confort. you end up use a smaller monitor to justify using a WM… why not, but dont donwvote me then
kitsunesoba 4y ago
This is very personal sort of thing. In my case, I don't think I could go laptop-screen-exclusive because I've become too accustomed to my monitor being held at exactly the right height and distance from my eyes with a VESA arm. This can be done with laptops too (and in fact, my laptop is on a VESA ARM via adapter itself), but it wouldn't be particularly comfortable to use as a primary monitor at the same distance. As far as tiling window managers go, I haven't been able to make them work for me on any size of screen. It probably boils down to the sorts of programs one uses in their day to day but I found that the auto-tiling does the wrong thing frustratingly often and enough programs are opted out into floating mode that it makes more sense to stick with a more traditional floating WM with optional tiling. I do however agree that smaller screens should be a bigger priority, but this is done easily enough without giving up a desktop monitor. Sidecar on an iPad works nicely for this, and there are plenty of portable screens that are just laptop panels in a chassis that you can hook up. There's also no shortage of bare laptop panels on eBay that one can assemble with a driver board and 3D printed case.
dt3ft 4y ago
Horrible way to work (if you spend 6+ hours writing code on that thing). Working on my 3 external monitors is a bliss.
ricardobeat 4y ago
> I mostly operate single applications within their own confined tag For all this talk about getting a realistic user experience, what on earth are tags? I have absolutely no idea what that means in the context of window managers.
- deleted 4y ago
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- alpaca128 4y ago
  It's virtual desktops but with a fancier name, and a minor bonus feature where specific windows can appear on multiple virtual desktops at once. DWM uses bitmasks to keep track of what window is on what virtual desktop and bitmasks can have multiple bits set, so windows can be on multiple desktops/"tags".
GoToRO 4y ago
I use virtual desktops. The only missing piece of the puzzle is the missing shortcuts to go directlly to a specific desktop, win + 3 for example. If Windows woild provide that, I coils also buy a bluetooth macro keyboard and use it just for that.
- rgoulter 4y ago
  > I [could] also buy a bluetooth macro keyboard and use it just for that. For two-hands-on-keyboard work, I quite like using 'cv' and 'm,' keys as chords for "desktop left" and "desktop right". This can be achieved on a keyboard with customisable firmware (like a QMK-powered keyboard), or perhaps through software like kmonad. Though, yeah, not every desktop environment has "go to desktop X", so I just get used to setting each one up, and 'remembering' how many times to go left/right when switching.
- ionflux 4y ago
  have you tried SylphyHornPlusWin11 [0]? this is a variant of SylphyHorn working on windows11, too. I use it daily, because I was missing exactly this functionality. But it also has other nice shortcuts, too. [0]: https://github.com/hwtnb/SylphyHornPlusWin11 https://github.com/hwtnb/SylphyHornPlusWin11
  - GoToRO 4y ago
    Thank you for the link. I will have to see if I'm allowed to install it on my work pc.
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robryan 4y ago
I think even if I preferred a single screen I'd keep another one around so more easily screen share and be able to keep some things offscreen.
- timbit42 4y ago
  Virtual desktops can do this. Just share one virtual desktop and not the others.
  - ccouzens 4y ago
    Which operating system(s) or window managers are you thinking of? I don't believe Gnome provides this option.
    - deleted 4y ago
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    - timbit42 4y ago
      I would expect the ability to share only one virtual desktop would be a function of your display sharing software, not your desktop.
spapas82 4y ago
The data in this article mentions that the most popular resolutions for desktop were 1920×1080 (9.94%) and 1366×768 (6.22%). The numbers don't really add up. What are the other possible resulutions? I'd presume that these two would the biggest percentage!
iLoveOncall 4y ago
I need 3 monitors or I am crippled, and the god awful alt+tab management of MacOS which is imposed on me contributes a lot to this need. And to be fair, you can tell me anything you want, I will not believe that you are as efficient with a single monitor as with at least 2. I used a single one for 6 months in 2020 and I lost a lot of productivity. Actually I do not believe it to the point that if I was in a position of power over someone who refuses to use more than one, I would get rid of them.
- satysin 4y ago
  Sounds like you could benefit from AltTab https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/ https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/ It's a free, open source alt+tab replacement for macOS. Highly customisable and works well.
  - iLoveOncall 4y ago
    Looks good, thanks!
- backendEngineer 4y ago
  I only have 2 currently at my new job, I have all the logs of services in tmux in 6 to 8 splited panels on 1 screen and IDE on 2nd, I feel as if there is one missing were I can have documentation/wikis/slack/jira etc. I think just using your eyes is faster than managing it on 1 screen but that's just how I'm used to it. Sadly most companies who are not solely into software developing have the same IT setup with 1-2 24 inch screens for the entire company. That's why I'm mostly in home office these days with my 4 screen setup.
- sys_64738 4y ago
  > Actually I do not believe it to the point that if I was in a position of power over someone who refuses to use more than one, I would get rid of them. You also need to be considerate of other people’s habits. When you typically think that your way is the ‘right way’ then you’re usually wrong.
- friend_and_foe 4y ago
6stringmerc 4y ago
Multiple monitors are a force multiplier to Alt+Tab. Yes, I can compile a formal business document from disparate programs and formats all on one screen and there is a bit of an advantage - mouse movement - but that's trivial compared to spatial awareness. Getting something from Excel into PowerPoint while checking Outlook incoming stuff and shooting the cow patties on Teams is a different modus operandi. That's why I relate what I do to being more like an F1 machine than a long-haul key puncher. When I'm on, I'm burning gas and hauling ass. When I'm off, I'm decompressing in ways that are not exactly customary.
bmitc 4y ago
I have a single 40" ultrawide, and I am much, much more productive on it than on laptop screens. I can usually have three or four windows tiled side-by-side, usually with two working code windows and a third for browsing documentation or viewing results or a terminal. It's hard to beat that. The 40" ultrawide format is nice because of the vertical space compared to other ultrawides. It's a 32" monitor with a little extra width. And because it has a built-in KVM, I have a single webcam, keyboard, mouse, and speaker setup for my work and home computers that I can switch between with a keyboard shortcut.
brnewd 4y ago
I was surprised I could be productive coding on a 6.8" Android phone using vscode plus bt mouse and keyboard. Everything depends on viewing distance.
piyh 4y ago
This is the intersection of masochism, minimalism, and technology asceticism.
aeturnum 4y ago
I respect people who really dial in their personal setups and I am also a little at a loss about what to say about these kinds of posts. As the author says - this seems like a highly personal preference that they spent some time and energy getting to. I'm happy for them and fully believe they've found their optimal setup. And, because it's so individual, I am not sure what to do with the post. It's absolutely true - and the author is aware - that end users and developers use their computers in different ways. It's also true that setting up your workspace to be more like an average user will give you some insight* into their situation. Finally it's true that most developers don't do that because they try to optimize their workspaces for their productivity and most people find adding screen real estate does that. I enjoy reading someone else's journal as much as the next person - and I'm always surprised when I see how other people react to pretty personal musings. * This is kind of untrue - statistical outputs are statistically true but they are conjoined with their other qualities. You won't "be in someones shoes" with a low-res screen until you are also sharing their: OS, usecases, application set, etc.
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Nevermark 4y ago
My setup is to have a large 4k tv on the wall beyond my desk, hooked up to both a Mac Studio and Windows PC. That clears my desk, removes my need for reading glasses, makes work legible from anywhere in the room, easy to demo stuff, ... Having the screen on the wall also makes the room feel less cluttered.
- steve1977 4y ago
  What size is “large”? (just wondering)
  - Nevermark 4y ago
    98" 4K LG TV :) Considering I have worked at home my whole career, my only real expenses are my computer equipment, so I tend to always push them. On either side of the 98", I have two 55" in portrait mode. 55" monitors are as long as a 98" is tall. I use the 55" monitors to keep my todo lists and other organizational/motivational info in my face all the time. The setup keeps me producing. I would have got 8k but ... 98" 8k is six figures! O_o
wilsonnb3 4y ago
Doesn't make any sense, this would be like an audio engineer getting rid of their studio monitors and mixing on AirPods because that's what people listen on. What they do instead is use their multi-thousand dollar speaker and room setup for mixing (because it is better!) but then check the end result on airpods, car stereos, etc. Just test on the resolutions you care about, no need to cripple your development setup full time.
- 1MachineElf 4y ago
  >Doesn't make any sense, this would be like an audio engineer getting rid of their studio monitors and mixing on AirPods because that's what people listen on. Skrillex, an EDM producer who became popular about a decade ago, did approximately this. They were iPod headphones back then, not AirPods. Perhaps designing according to the vast majority of users is effective enough?
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - connicpu 4y ago
    The trouble with that specifically for audio, if you never test it on anything else you might miss things like crackles that only happen on speakers capable of producing crackles in that frequency range
  - louhike 4y ago
    He specifically talked about an audio engineer. Yes as a composer/producer you can get by without audio monitoring hardware if you have an audio engineer taking care of the mixing/mastering after you. Those are different profiles.
  - herbst 4y ago
    He took a music genre that you couldn't really listen to except you have semi professional equipment and modified the basses to make them 'hearable' for the masses on cheap equipment or even loud on their phones. I kinda can see that this worked for him. Not sure if that transports well to other producers.
syntheweave 4y ago
I gave up on external monitors a long while ago. When you have to have them, it's indicative of a workflow that needs to be fiddly about the data you're working on, usually either manually monitoring a lot of stuff, or parsing things on one screen(docs) to do things on the other(editors). Some jobs do need it, and I'm not denying that, but if you're doing something where you control more of the environment ground-up and dipping into a variety of digital tools for parts of the workflow, going with paper notebooks and the phone as the second screen can be a lot better; Gridded or dotted 8x5" or A5 spiral notebooks are very convenient for having "enough" visual structure in a document and they aren't particularly more or less constrained than toting around a second monitor. Prop them up on a bookstand so they're at an ergonomic height, and give yourself a color multipen so you can add highlighting and organization by color. Do your tasks by documenting the plan in the book and specific editing functions or build processes you plan to use so that during execution, you have both a plan and a cheat sheet, and it's always in the same place. When you need to share, take a photo.
Always42 4y ago
You do you man, but I like my big monitor :)
asherah 4y ago
to me this reads like the author was simply too frustrated with their wm's handling of large / secondary monitors and post-facto justified the switch to only one monitor
- krater23 4y ago
  Exactly that. I use 3 monitors, the handling of 3 monitors is really simple compared to one big screen. Thats the only reason I stick at it currently. But I know why I do that.
petarb 4y ago
Web dev here - I use to have three monitors early on in my career. Two side by side and one vertical for a terminal. Then eventually two and now just one large 32” 4k UHD one. Having one has definitely helped me focus better. Left side of the screen is the browser and the right is VSCode with a terminal in the bottom half. It’s my ideal setup as of last 5 years.
- husarcik 4y ago
  Do you think 32" is ideal size? What about curved? I'm thinking about making the transition to a single monitor too.
  - strix_varius 4y ago
    I use a single curved 32" monitor, same setup as above most of the time via window snapping: code/result (UI, test suite, etc) It's my favorite way to work so far. The conclusion in this article seems pretty silly tbh... I'm able to use my large monitor to test multiple browsers and resolutions at once with instant feedback, leading to better responsive designs, delivered faster.
    - bravura 4y ago
      How do you do snapping on OSX? Can you talk more about good one monitor workflows? Do you have workspaces or all windows are in one workspace? Etc
      - cocoa19 4y ago
        Rectangle for snapping: https://rectangleapp.com/ https://rectangleapp.com/
      - strix_varius 4y ago
        Rectangle and other similar apps can provide simple snapping (drag to right edge: snap to right half, drag to NE corner, snap to top right quad, etc). The only time I use workspaces is for things that benefit from huge windows: an editor with tons of files, 3d modeling, etc.
j_kao 4y ago
One area which an external monitor (or high resolution) helps a lot with is UI or frontend programming. It's a huge pain to play with the chrome or Firefox debugger and have to jump between windows to get feedback. When it comes to backend or non-UI work, a laptop is just fine.
grufus 4y ago
[flagged]
seydor 4y ago
Designing for narrow screens is good. Things look better in an average screens, but also on a tablet and on a mobile landscape mode. Small width layouts are always a hassle / unusable.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Designing for narrow screens ruins the experience for wide screens. As such it is extremely bad trend to happen. Making daily user experience lot worse for many users.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
Eh. I use one of these: [0]. It’s attached to my 14-inch laptop, but I seldom take that out of its drawer. It allows me to have multiple simulator screens open at once, and I also have an original iPhone SE, that I use for testing, but most of my on-device testing is done, using my iPhone 13 Mini, and my iPad Mini (I also have an iPad Pro 12.9-inch). I find that gives me a good mix. [0] https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-49WL95C-W-ultrawide-monitor https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-49WL95C-W-ultrawide-monito...
bigpeopleareold 4y ago
I only use one monitor, the laptop one. I tend to focus on a single monitor, despite trying to use more screen real estate, but forcing myself to use it has not been productive. The only case it is useful is with side-by-side windows. It hasn't been frequent enough, but now I am thinking that having one of those small side monitors for a laptop screen might be really useful in this case.
d_sem 4y ago
Randy Pausch, a former Computer Science Professor at University of Virginia who passed away from Pancreatic Cancer, gave a popular lecture on Time Manage in the last few months of his illness. In his lecture he proposed a monitor set up I still use today. What I love about this method is that one quickly learned which monitors does what and so there are fewer brain cycles to decide where to put your windows. The Three monitor method: - One for reading. ( documents, reference material, requirements) - One for writing. ( code, writing emails, creating anything) - One for time. (calendar app always open.) He mentions it roughly 49 min into the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blaK_tB_KQA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blaK_tB_KQA
- raincole 4y ago
  Reading and writing monitors make sense. But I'd definitely not put a monitor just for calender/time. It sounds like a recipe to increase my anxiety leve. I guess because it's a lecture about time management (I haven't listened to it)? But still...
- kkoncevicius 4y ago
  So in this setup, when you read your email you would put it on the "read" monitor, but when you compose an email you would transfer it over to the "write" monitor?
  - diffeomorphism 4y ago
    Why transfer? Writing emails usually opens another window (e.g. outlook, thunderbird etc.), so you have one window for reading and one for writing. Also makes it easier to cross-reference other emails or documents while writing your email.
MandieD 4y ago
I think a lot of user frustration is caused by front end developers having relatively new, well-specced laptops connected to one or more nice monitors, but as the author pointed out, an awful lot of users have 768 x 1366, which usually implies low specs all around, so kudos to this guy for caring for his users in this way. Related tip for developing the visuals for an in-person talk: use a 13” or less laptop to put together and rehearse slides and demos. If it’s readable on that, it should be readable in a big conference room on a mediocre projector.
siva7 4y ago
Let's face it. If Linus Torvalds can work perfectly on a Macbook without external monitors, i don't see any reason why people claim that this must be a very unproductive way of working.
mrweasel 4y ago
Small note, depending on location and situation. If you're in a work situation, not using an external monitor could cause issues for you employer, even if you're working from home. Some countries, like Denmark, have laws that require employees to be given, and use, external monitors, keyboards and pointing devices. For most people being hunched over a laptop for eight hours a day will result in neck, back, and/or wrist pain. Your employer could be fined if you do not use an external monitor. A former coworker of mine had to be repeatedly remind to use the provided equipment. In the end it was agree that everything would sit on his desk, ready to use, in case of a visit from the government office of workplace safety.
- IYasha 4y ago
  > in case of a visit from the government office of workplace safety. What!? This world is a truly bizarre place.
- Symbiote 4y ago
  That was my first thought, but there's a clear photo in the article of the laptop on a suitable stand.
  - mrweasel 4y ago
    Yes and no. It's on a stand, but it doesn't seem to fulfill the requirements for adjustability. It's not height adjustable and the tilt may be insufficient, at least one way, but excellent the other.
- scns 4y ago
  There is a whole site dedicated to this phenomenon. I found a presentation about Tech Neck here [0] [0] https://mescforyou.ksc.nasa.gov/Content/RehabWorks/Tech%20Neck%20Final.pdf https://mescforyou.ksc.nasa.gov/Content/RehabWorks/Tech%20Ne... (edit) add link
  - Tempest1981 4y ago
    Thanks for that. You can also get it via bad posture at a larger display. It may present as muscle pain, and can require surgery if not corrected. Get your ergonomics right, or you may have regrets years later, when you're older.
nicbou 4y ago
I think that many web developers would benefit from testing on slow hardware, bad monitors and shoddy internet. I work on a 2017 Macbook 12" unless I'm at home. Some websites literally don't work on that resolution. Other websites don't work on hotel Wi-Fi. Others are unreadable on budget laptop screens. It's good to remember that a lot of the world isn't a Silicon Valley office.
badsectoracula 4y ago
> Hell, some of these users were being shown the tablet-based view of the applications since our breakpoints were so ridiculously large. Yikes. I used a 1366x768 monitor on my desktop for a couple of years and this was a huge annoyance - almost every single site assumed that i was on a tablet. Firefox allowed me to "zoom out" the sites which helped somewhat but then pretty much everything was a combination of tiny letters surrounded by tons of empty space. Worse, i remember checking various stat sites at the time and 1366x768 was the most common non-mobile resolution!
- alpaca128 4y ago
  It also affects people on much larger displays which just want a narrower browser window. So many sites break in random ways (like scrolling not working) or hide important things like the login form when the window isn't wide enough. Clearly many sites are never tested for that. So many years of talking about responsive web frameworks and half the sites simply don't care.
kstenerud 4y ago
I've never really cared much about my physical dev environment setup. I've been programming since 1983, professionally since 1996. There are very few systems I haven't used, ranging from a commodore 64 connected to an old blurry black&white TV to Sun workstations and DEC alphas and SGIs to PCs and laptops of every conceivable size and make to multi-monitor setups, trackballs, trackpads, nubs, mice, standing desks, sitting desks, couch, cross-legged on the floor, in an airplane seat, at the kitchen table... And none of it has ever mattered. As long as I have the software I like and can see what I'm typing or looking up, it's all good. And since most development happens between the ears with the odd short burst of typing, where and how you dump the fruits of your mental labor doesn't make a meaningful enough difference to worry about it.
- hamdouni 4y ago
  This ! Content > Form, but Form brings attention and alas we are in an attention economy.
- tbolt 4y ago
  > And since most development happens between the ears with the odd short burst of typing Love it
p4l4g4 4y ago
I maintain the cloud infrastructure at my company and I went the other way around: from laptop only to an 3 screens (laptop on a stand + two screens on the side at a 90 degree angle). When I need a browser window at the right resolution, I just drag it to my laptop screen. The two vertical screens are configured a little different. Vertical screens are terrible for screensharing. For that reason I virtually split one of them in 2 parts (using xrandr). This gives me two square screens that are ideal for screen sharing. So, virtually, I have 4 screens in 3 different sizes and have no issue assigning stuff to them. The vertical screen is always used for Emacs and different chat apps used for work (have a workspace with all chats stacked vertically, so I can keep tabs easily). One of the square screens is used for browsing, while the other is used for screen sharing (or general browsing/terminal when my screen is not shared). The laptop screen is often used as a scratch pad (short term stuff). I know it might be a bit overblown, but it works well for me. I really like the fact that I can run multiple things and monitor their output, without interrupting my workflow.
KronisLV 4y ago
Currently my personal PC is hooked up to four 1080p monitors, each 21.5" because that's all I could reasonably afford to put on my table (monitor costs, VESA mounts/stands for the weight, GPU that can serve that resolution well). This setup works pretty well for most things I might want to do: it works well for recording or streaming because I can use one of them purely for the content that I want to show, while managing OBS/music/notes on other monitors. It also works well for development, because I can look at code and a web browser, as well as have a Git client, terminal or something like docs open all at the same time and switch between those easily. I don't need to worry about overlapping windows or lots of windows on a single monitor, or many tiny tiled windows, or having to manage everything with multiple workspaces - everything is just there, side by side. I can also vaguely organize things by importance, if I feel like it - my development stuff can be front and center (two widescreen monitors atop of one another), some utilities etc. on a vertical monitor to the side, whereas the less important things like e-mail or IM clients etc. to the side further. I'm not saying that using just a laptop screen isn't workable, because it most certainly is, but for my personal approach more monitors is indeed better, at least up to a point. 3 or 4 monitors feels like the sweet spot so far (especially because it isn't too hard to get a GPU that supports them). Pain point: if you ever use Windows and have any of your monitors turned vertically, you'll probably want something like FancyZones for the window snapping to work correctly: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzones https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzon... Also on widescreen displays it seems to me that vertical taskbars work a bit better, which can be problematic in certain OSes (like Windows 11), but isn't much of an issue in others (most Linux distros). If VR resolution was better, it'd be nice to take this layout to the max: having windows in 3D space, using them as a monitor each. A bit like what Safespaces did: https://arcan-fe.com/2018/03/29/safespaces-an-open-source-vr-desktop/ https://arcan-fe.com/2018/03/29/safespaces-an-open-source-vr...
college_physics 4y ago
There might be a distribution of neuronal types (and work requirements) out there but I find small monitors suffocating. Combined with the reduced control of a touchpad versus a mouse and the superior tactile feel of a mechanical keyboard this makes working on laptops a distinctly degraded experience for me.
- SwiftyBug 4y ago
  I find that the touchpad gives me much more control than a mouse could. I use an external Magic Trackpad on macOS and it's just so natural to use gestures to manage desktops, zoom stuff, show all windows, etc.
  - college_physics 4y ago
    For me at least the touchpad feels like a less precise channel that is only attractive due to portability. You never quite know where exactly the pointer will stop when you stop moving your finger (the inertia of the mouse might somehow help with that feeling) We do know what must be objectively the most precise device - what digital artists use to create designs and paintings and its neither a mouse nor a touchpad :-). But it would be interesting to see if people have actually measured this. But indeed there is the more general concept of "control" and in this general sense any multi-touch device that makes use of more fingers opens in principle a larger range of interactions.
gonzo41 4y ago
I'm old, my eye's are going. I did the laptop only thing like the OP for a while and it worked but I was craning my neck forward to see text. Increasing the size of stuff meant less screen so I just kept craning my neck until I hurt it. Anyway, I solved the problem buy going to a single Dell 27inch QHD monitor that has a usbc hub in it. It is amazingly good.
- friend_and_foe 4y ago
  Laptops are bad for your posture, external, elevated monitors are best. I also like ultrawide monitors, but I do not really think most people need more than one of them.
meling 4y ago
> I'm able to instantly understand frustrations of everyday users while developing new features or tweaking existing UIs. Being able to advocate for our end-users by using legit use cases is extremely helpful. (Removes the "design by gut-feeling" mistakes) This same reasoning could be used in reverse; because designers/devs aren’t using multi-monitor UIs or switch regularly between multi-monitor and laptop-only is why we can’t have a good experience. Like on macOS, why won’t it remember the window size from the last time it was connected to a larger screen.
johnchristopher 4y ago
I also stop using dual monitors when switching to dwm (for 10 minutes) then awesome. Because fiddling with config files to get dual monitors + tags right and adapting to a tiling workflow with two screens was too much to handle for me. And I didn't find much use for the second monitor after a while (mail ? messaging ? it was just an secondary interface to distractions). It made my life easier because I don't have to manage the second monitor ("am I sharing the good screen ?", "why does the main monitor stay in sleep mode ?", etc.). Both laptop and monitor have the same resolution so I keep using the external monitor, it's more comfortable. I am considering an ultra wide monitor though but I have concerns around it being too wide and adding eye or neck fatigue long term.
- scbrg 4y ago
  > I also stop using dual monitors when switching to dwm (for 10 minutes) then awesome. Because fiddling with config files to get dual monitors + tags right I'm a dwm user with three screens, and there is literally zero extra configuration that's needed to get it working with multiple screens. The three screens have independent tag sets, and it Just Works. My problem is rather the same as the author of the fine article's, that dwm's two column model doesn't fit very wide screens (>2500px) all that well.
  - johnchristopher 4y ago
    > I'm a dwm user with three screens, and there is literally zero extra configuration that's needed to get it working with multiple screens. The three screens have independent tag sets, and it Just Works. There's some confusion, I am using awesome, not dwm. I only spent a few dozen minutes with dwm and then switched to awesome but it wasn't because of dual monitor concerns. Though I am also glad I stopped using dual monitor, whatever the DE.
    - scbrg 4y ago
      Sorry, yes, I understood that. But since you mentioned dwm and awesome in the same breath and then went on to complain about configuration headaches I thought it might be worthwhile to point out that dwm actually doesn't suffer from the configuration headaches that apparently come with awesome + multiple monitors. But then, dwm has its own set of other limitations of course (quite a lot of them, in fact) - everything's a tradeoff.
deafpolygon 4y ago
3x27" 4k monitor at 150% scaling seems to be the sweet spot for me. It strikes the balance of text clarity and desktop resolution. I use the center one most of the time, and the one on my right for supporting tasks. My left one monitors stuff (terminals, sysmon, etc.) as well as my music. I use virtual desktops to separate the task I'm working on. I couldn't go back to a single screen, much less 1366x768. I'm often dividing my center and right monitor into vertical splits (supported by Windows snap feature). I tried for a long, long time to use a tiling WM and realized it is just too many compromises in order to use it efficiently. Many applications are not really compatible unless you're willing to switch your entire workflow to using mostly CLI applications. If you're using a dynamic one, you're still moving windows based on priority, and on a regular tiling WM (i.e., i3), you still need to move windows around. Mouse is still the fastest way to resize/move a window. With window snapping, this is more or less a non-issue these days (Windows 11 is still sufficient when it comes to multiple monitors as I'm able to move my window from the right one to my left with Win + Arrow). I can still alt-tab. I can't use a 40" 4k screen because it's too large, and it's more about division of screens than resolution alone. I also like the improved clarity that 150% scaling brings me on a 27" screen.
mrjin 4y ago
I guess I'm bored enough to reply to this. Different people have different needs, end of story.
ehnto 4y ago
I switched from dual monitor to a single 2560x1440/quad HD monitor when I switched to using the i3 tiling window. manager. I think I can picture the issue they ran into with a 4k monitor, but I do not have that issue at QHD. It's enough width to display a document or narrow browser window next to my IDE and a couple of terminals beneath the IDE. Ideal setup for me personally.
mekpro 4y ago
To me, the real benefit of an external monitor is not the display size, but the height and position. Compared to a laptop-on-table setup, an external display allows the screen to be positioned higher to match the height of the eyes, while also keeping the keyboard lower to match the height of the arms. This makes working for extended periods more comfortable and reduces shoulder and neck pain. When I cannot afford an external display, I have found that using a laptop stand and an external keyboard can help a lot.
onion2k 4y ago
When I was a kid in the 1980s I really wanted to draw comics for a living. I spent ages sat at the family dining room table pouring my heart into little comic strips like the ones in my favorite comic books. I'd try so hard to draw as well as the artists I admired but I could never quite get there. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't match the level of detail, clarity, and expression they did. When I was older I learned that comic books are drawn on much bigger paper than the comic. Part of the production process is to shrink the drawings to comic book size. Drawing bigger comics is a lot easier. I was trying to draw the comic and mimic the rest of the production process as well. The same is true for dev work. Constraining yourself to what the end user has is throwing away a ton of benefits from having access to better tools. By all means test your work on a similar machine but don't throw up artificial barriers to doing good work if you don't need to. You're just trying to go straight to the final version. That doesn't work.
- gala8y 4y ago
  Very good metaphor.
- nicbou 4y ago
  On the other hand, you have to get a feel for how the web is like for your users. Maybe your website runs well on a dev machine with a fibre internet connection and an ad blocker on DEFCON 1, but what about your users on budget laptops with crappy screens? Or what about people with crappy wi-fi?
  - helmholtz 4y ago
    What do you think GP meant with "By all means test your work on a similar machine..."
    - nicbou 4y ago
      It's not just about testing your own software for a few minutes, but really experiencing the web as one of your users.
- 4y ago
lovetocode 4y ago
I tried this as well for about 8 months and ended up going back to an external monitor setup. Why? Health reasons. The ergonomics of using a laptop everyday is detrimental to your posture. Being hunched over and looking down at a laptop all day is not healthy. You can still have bad posture with an external monitor but now these risks are avoidable if you are disciplined enough. With a laptop you really have no choice but to have poor posture.
- jlarcombe 4y ago
  laptop stand + external keyboard / mouse / trackpad
  - cassepipe 4y ago
    Just as they show a in the blog post
    - jlarcombe 4y ago
      Yeah. I do this, though I sometimes use an extra monitor depending on what I'm doing. The screen on the 16" Mac Book Pro is much nicer to look at all day than any reasonably priced external screen, and I find I tend to get a bit "dizzied" by enormous screens right in front of me.
  - lovetocode 4y ago
    I couldn't imagine this being healthy for your eye sight.
    - jlarcombe 4y ago
      what?
chiefalchemist 4y ago
> while a large portion of my end-users would never benefit from those "pixel-perfect" designs. Slightly off-topic but this is precisely why people need to stop saying pixel-perfect. It doesn't exist anymore than Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, or an honest politician. At the extreme, two users with the same hardware have the resolution set differently, might use different browsers and/or have different zoom settings in the browser. Saying pixel-perfect is at this point like saying, "fax it to me."
nateburke 4y ago
Eye motion has a cognitive cost. If I can take that eye motion and move it into my fingers' muscle memory to toggle screens, there is an increase in overall focus. I find an external or secondary monitor is good for large refactors across multiple repos, but that's a small slice of my typical book of work. Most of the time it's just distracting to have extra reasons to move my eyes and head. If I need a break, I go outside and look at far away things.
NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
Since Zoom became a thing, I can't imagine having to work with just a single smaller screen. I need to have enough real-estate to be able to multi-task someone sharing a desktop full-screen on Zoom legibly along with at least two of email, IM and IDE.
cassepipe 4y ago
I have been using a 15 inches laptop for coding for 4 years now and splitting the screen whether in vim or having two windows next to each other does not make for a great experience. Rather than buying a separate screen and having one more thing to manage I remapped Super + J and Super + K in Cinnamon to just switch windows instantly. Sometimes I even use Super + $number to get to a specific window. I think it works fine and it's more resilient: I can code when I don't have an extra screen
osigurdson 4y ago
>> I no longer have to worry about "context switching" if I decide to un-dock my laptop and work somewhere mobile. It does make sense to optimize for the lowest common denominator if working away from a desk often. However, that would also mean foregoing the external keyboard and mouse imo. TP keyboards are pretty good and the "nub" is better than a mouse in some ways (though seems to cause hurt finger after a while). I still prefer an external mechanical kb, mouse and big monitor but I get where the OP is coming from.
- notacoward 4y ago
  > that would also mean foregoing the external keyboard and mouse imo Didn't work that way for me. An external keyboard and mouse (or trackpad) is easy enough to stick in your luggage and take through an airport. A monitor - especially a large one - is much less so. For the years that I traveled one week a month, I generally avoided hooking up to external monitors even when they were available at my destination because I didn't want to manage two different layouts or workflows. YMMV, of course, but I think "keyboard and mouse but not monitor when away from home base" is a reasonable and quite common compromise.
  - osigurdson 4y ago
    I guess it depends on how mobile your workflow is. Hard to use an external kb on a plane or at a coffee shop. Maybe Zuck will solve these problems for use with his glasses. Crossing fingers.
  - osigurdson 4y ago
    Also, I noticed that there are pretty cheap portable monitors out there - mostly from unknown brands however. Pretty sure you could pack these in a bag.
    - IYasha 4y ago
      There are strap-on foldable side-monitors for laptops out there. But they still use HDMI and USB ports.
hk1337 4y ago
I do use the external and multi monitor setup. I tried for awhile having them side by side but it didn’t work having to look slightly left or right all the time. I’ve tried working from just the laptop and it’s fine for awhile but not long term. Now, I have my laptop open on a stand with Keepass full screen on one side, all my communications (outlook, zoom, slack) on the right, and all my focus items in the center. We’ll see how long that lasts.
BrotherBisquick 4y ago
To everyone providing testimony such as "I don't use an external monitor and I'm fine" (or not), please mention whether you're using a laptop stand and/or separate keyboard/mouse.
cjonas 4y ago
I've been working (software) on only my mbp for the last few years and haven't seen any real impact to my productivity. You just get more efficient at navigating a small space. It's nice to not feel like I'm missing anything when working in coffee shops or on workcation trips.
BeFlatXIII 4y ago
But why 1366x768 and not something with retina densities?
- IYasha 4y ago
  Because, well, manufacturers did not leave us a choice? (* I'd go for 1280*800)
rldjbpin 4y ago
i've personally stuck with using a 15" laptop screen thus far (and a smaller one at work during pandemic). this has been mostly out of necessity of moving around and the personal motto of not hoarding stuff when you would have to get rid of it in a few months. while i'd love to give a secondary monitor a go, even when i'd use multiple monitors at work, it would not automatically become a huge productivity boost that most people swear by. one "big enough" screen has done just fine. even our brain zones out the visual feed outside of what's in front of you, so you are only saving tabbing shortcuts when working with more than one display. so much for those swearing by keyboard shortcuts and vim dotfiles.
friend_and_foe 4y ago
I get the graphic designer specific reasons, but I've noticed the same sort of trend in myself upon switching to a tiling wm. The truth is you just don't need multiple monitors with a tiling wm. Space gets wasted in a normal stacking window managers, and you have to manually and meticulously lay your windows out. Most people don't have the patience and just full screen everything. Having layouts optimized automatically, or with a few quick key presses makes things easier, and you wind up actually using multiple workspaces. Switching workspaces is easier than looking around at different monitors. I do believe that people that use multiple monitors are either showing off or could benefit greatly from tiling window managers, because they'd spend less money on monitors, and less e waste and all that. Very few people have needs that actually demand multiple monitors, a fraction of the number of people that have them.

141 points by glenngillen 4y ago

I strongly prefer having only one screen no larger than 19 inches with a pixel density between about 110ppi and 150ppi. Why? Neck and eye strain with all other configurations I've tried. Also small font sizes really shine when the pixels are that large.

IYasha 4y ago

> I found the amount of those stuck at 1366x768 to be quite shocking. Hi, one of those here! Life is okay at lower resolution. But definitely not getting better because of ... designers. Low resolution also means less computing and less energy, so lots of portable devices will have it for a long time.

rhaway84773 4y ago

I think of all the people who have/might ditch an external author, the specific OP here has the best use case. UX/UI designers are definitely #1 among the people who should use computers in a way closer to their target audience. But also using a tiling window manager makes using a tiny single monitor extremely effective. 1. There is almost no wasted space. Almost the entire space is used for your content. It maximizes screen space better than any other paradigm there. 2. Automatic and effective filing meant I was far more likely to open windows besides each other much more rapidly (and way more conveniently) than I could arrange windows between monitors. 3. I haven’t used DWM, but i3 instead, and it was the only software where multiple desktops actually felt almost as effective as having actual multiple windows. The low graphical requirements of tiling window managers (I’m pretty sure their rendering is way faster because the display is so much simpler) meant that they could render a new workspace faster than I could turn my head from 1 monitor to another, and easy KB shortcuts made it ridiculously easy to switch between desktops. Let’s say I was copying 1 document’s text manually to another, it was probably quicker for me to type, hit Alt+2 read what I needed to copy next, hit Alt+1 to go back to the writing workspace and continue typing, than it was for me to type, turn my head to the other monitor, read, and then turn my head back to the 1st monitor to continue typing.

marvel_boy 4y ago

I can't agree more. Sure, there are legit uses for a huge screen (displaying several windows at the same time), but the developer need to focus, focus , focus.

faeyanpiraat 4y ago
Nothing can break focus more for me than constantly having to switch between windows (e.g.: vscode / chrome). 2 monitors are the way to go for me.
- The_Colonel 4y ago
  Yes, there are many cases where a lot of space is needed. Like three-way merge ideally needs triple the width of normal code. There are many other use cases - keeping the jenkins build in peripheral vision, having terminal open with running logs, having browser open containing reference / documentation etc. Switching windows is a productivity killer.
- dpkirchner 4y ago
  For me it's ultrawide. I'm using a 34" display at 3440x1440. I can have two "full size" windows side-by-side. (Full size meaning they each feel about as large as they did on my 15" MacBook display).
- dt3ft 4y ago
  3 work the best for me. Debugging an API on monitor 1, VSCode on monitor 2, browser with the frontend rendered on 3. I could also use a 4th for the browser dev console. (Full stack development)

CSSer 4y ago

I'm still kind of at a loss. Why not just exclusively use the laptop screen as the development monitor and the larger monitor for... everything else?

iamben 4y ago
...or just resize a browser window.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Because op found a solution (a tiling window manager) and then needed to find a problem.
  - alpaca128 4y ago
    Dwm can be nice to use, but like 99% of tiling window managers it's a dynamic one and after years of use I find those rather impractical. I don't get the appeal of every window on screen rearranging and resizing just because I opened a terminal, it's more chaotic than anything else. My favorite so far was stumpwm, which lets you statically split the screen in any way and then have a stack of windows in every segment. Works fine on every display size or number, all windows are neatly arranged according to their purpose and size requirements and just as much flexibility for keybindings. Though nowadays I use Mac OS and it's...fine. What's actually important is how smoothly it lets you switch windows.

geocrasher 4y ago

This article is a good reminder that there is no such thing as one-size-fits-all. His setup would be horrible for me. I currently have three 1920x1080 monitors in an L configuration (two in the middle, one to the right) and it works great for me- because I need to see a lot of windows at once. I tell everyone I work with "you need at least two monitors" because for our work, it's true. Clearly a different case with OP.

stepbeek 4y ago
I guess it’s true: there is no generalization that’s absolutely true including this one.
VBprogrammer 4y ago
Very generally, what is your work? If some part of it is "monitoring", maybe some metrics or live orders of some kind then having it permanently on another monitor is a no brainer. I generally do all my work on one screen and keep email / teams / Spotify on the laptop screen.
- geocrasher 4y ago
  I work in the high end managed WordPress industry as Customer Success Manager. At any moment I have Slack, Tickets, Live Chat, Shell to several servers, and my server monitoring system up. ADHD means "out of sight out of mind" and so it's all visible all the time.
  - JohnBooty 4y ago
    ADHD means "out of sight out of mind" You know, it's funny. I believe I'm similar to you in this department. I use a giant 4K monitor as an ADHD mitigation tool. But I used to work with another guy. Also ADHD. And he said he absolutely had to restrict himself to smaller, single screens, in order to focus because looking at multiple windows at once was anathema to his ADHD. Just doubly reinforces how unique brains are. Even with the same diagnosis, different strategies.

CoBE10 4y ago

I have a similar setup to this, with a Thinkpad x230 and a budget 1600x900 HP monitor, and I also use dwm. The second monitor allows me to work with items that I don't need to interact with frequently. For example, I can display the PDF output of a LaTeX document on one monitor while keeping vim and a PDF of a book I'm reading on the other monitor. If I only had one monitor, my productivity would suffer because I would have to constantly switch between windows.

Invictus0 4y ago

Waiting for the article about why he downgraded his camera to a moldy potato

dt3ft 4y ago
The title is pure clickbait. If he switched to the moldy potato, I bet we’d all click to read that article too. Our human curiosity is weird :)
precompute 4y ago
Waiting for the article about how "HN is dying"

acdha 4y ago

I stopped when I switched to a 5K iMac. 5120x2880 is enough for things like side by side browsers and editors, and I use the excellent Rectangle app to easily align them in perfect ½, ⅓, or ¼ width of the screen (I use Firefox’s excellent responsive design mode for exactly matching client devices).

jrm4 4y ago

Nice, I like this idea here. Broadly, even though my main is a 27" 4K, I now more or less can't stand using two monitors, except for specific use cases where it "makes sense," e.g. when I teach classes online, and I need "my space" vs "what the students are seeing."

kraftman 4y ago

I have to switch from my 43" screen to my 15" laptop when travelling and I always hate it. I find it so much more productive to have everything open at once and not have to tab between windows.

zwkrt 4y ago

Its funny. I have programmed for a decade and at no point I have ever found that an external monitor was the solution to my problems. My coworkers think I'm crazy, but I do all development on a 15' macbook. My path to efficiency and ergonomic work has always been to become more familiar with the keyboard shortcuts for navigating windows and tabs. Along with Spectacle, Vimium, and tree-style tabs, I have never wanted for a second monitor. Mostly I find it annoying because I forget where I put my applications if I have two monitors. My overall mantra at work is that I can only do one thing a a time if I want to do it well. I feel in a sense limiting myself to one viewport helps reinforce this behavior.

cfiggers 4y ago
Where did you find a MacBook with a 15 foot screen???? No wonder you don't need a second monitor, good grief
jfarina 4y ago
Where did you find a laptop with a fifteen foot screen?
- bombcar 4y ago
  Frank got it when he sold his 2000 inch TV.
- reshie 4y ago
  not to mention being able to rotate it which portrait feels better with code and nice as a secondary dedicated.
- IncRnd 4y ago
  It's on the macbook flair, which is a foldable cell phone with a keyboard. Developers have learned about the power and low cost for this machine and have started to use it as a laptop. The multiple folds of the screen and keyboard are what allow the flair's 15 foot footprint to be carried around in a phone's form factor. I have one of the original 16 core versions of these. Come to find out, Apple has recently released 80 and 128 core versions of the flair, so I may need to upgrade next year for the additional horsepower to run data models.

oystersauce8 4y ago

Being an expert window switcher is very empowering to me, much more than lots of monitors. I use keyboard maestro, several hotkeyed window layouts

cmdrk 4y ago

Personally, I use a single 38" curved monitor (3480x1600). I have old man eyes but this allows me to have up to 4 vertically split tmux panes with at least 80 cols in each pane for programming in vim. I find multi-monitor very distracting, but I'd never go back to a single 1080p screen at this point.

qiller 4y ago

For a long while I used just the 15"/16" MacBook without any external displays. I find multiple displays to be bad for my concentration or my neck and eyes (too much movement...) For web development, Chrome's responsive design mode with free viewport scaling is great - like testing a 4K TV display resolution in a half of a browser window. Wish Firefox had a similar scaling mode...

phendrenad2 4y ago

I used to have triple 4k monitors, but sold them after the layoffs and paid rent instead. So far I'm not missing them much.

wanderingmind 4y ago

The more you have customizable tools, the less is the need for larger or more monitors. I used to feel crippled if I don't have two large monitors, but after starting to use i3 and customizing it to my needs, I'm quiet comfortable with a single external monitor to do most work. It has been a great tool for improving my productivity.

Avlin67 4y ago

you obviously cannot use a 48 inch 4K monitor. but for me I think that 4K on large display offers so much space and confort. you end up use a smaller monitor to justify using a WM… why not, but dont donwvote me then

kitsunesoba 4y ago

This is very personal sort of thing. In my case, I don't think I could go laptop-screen-exclusive because I've become too accustomed to my monitor being held at exactly the right height and distance from my eyes with a VESA arm. This can be done with laptops too (and in fact, my laptop is on a VESA ARM via adapter itself), but it wouldn't be particularly comfortable to use as a primary monitor at the same distance. As far as tiling window managers go, I haven't been able to make them work for me on any size of screen. It probably boils down to the sorts of programs one uses in their day to day but I found that the auto-tiling does the wrong thing frustratingly often and enough programs are opted out into floating mode that it makes more sense to stick with a more traditional floating WM with optional tiling. I do however agree that smaller screens should be a bigger priority, but this is done easily enough without giving up a desktop monitor. Sidecar on an iPad works nicely for this, and there are plenty of portable screens that are just laptop panels in a chassis that you can hook up. There's also no shortage of bare laptop panels on eBay that one can assemble with a driver board and 3D printed case.

dt3ft 4y ago

Horrible way to work (if you spend 6+ hours writing code on that thing). Working on my 3 external monitors is a bliss.

ricardobeat 4y ago

> I mostly operate single applications within their own confined tag For all this talk about getting a realistic user experience, what on earth are tags? I have absolutely no idea what that means in the context of window managers.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
alpaca128 4y ago
It's virtual desktops but with a fancier name, and a minor bonus feature where specific windows can appear on multiple virtual desktops at once. DWM uses bitmasks to keep track of what window is on what virtual desktop and bitmasks can have multiple bits set, so windows can be on multiple desktops/"tags".

GoToRO 4y ago

I use virtual desktops. The only missing piece of the puzzle is the missing shortcuts to go directlly to a specific desktop, win + 3 for example. If Windows woild provide that, I coils also buy a bluetooth macro keyboard and use it just for that.

rgoulter 4y ago
> I [could] also buy a bluetooth macro keyboard and use it just for that. For two-hands-on-keyboard work, I quite like using 'cv' and 'm,' keys as chords for "desktop left" and "desktop right". This can be achieved on a keyboard with customisable firmware (like a QMK-powered keyboard), or perhaps through software like kmonad. Though, yeah, not every desktop environment has "go to desktop X", so I just get used to setting each one up, and 'remembering' how many times to go left/right when switching.
ionflux 4y ago
have you tried SylphyHornPlusWin11 [0]? this is a variant of SylphyHorn working on windows11, too. I use it daily, because I was missing exactly this functionality. But it also has other nice shortcuts, too. [0]: https://github.com/hwtnb/SylphyHornPlusWin11 https://github.com/hwtnb/SylphyHornPlusWin11
- GoToRO 4y ago
  Thank you for the link. I will have to see if I'm allowed to install it on my work pc.

deleted 4y ago

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robryan 4y ago

I think even if I preferred a single screen I'd keep another one around so more easily screen share and be able to keep some things offscreen.

timbit42 4y ago
Virtual desktops can do this. Just share one virtual desktop and not the others.
- ccouzens 4y ago
  Which operating system(s) or window managers are you thinking of? I don't believe Gnome provides this option.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - timbit42 4y ago
    I would expect the ability to share only one virtual desktop would be a function of your display sharing software, not your desktop.

spapas82 4y ago

The data in this article mentions that the most popular resolutions for desktop were 1920×1080 (9.94%) and 1366×768 (6.22%). The numbers don't really add up. What are the other possible resulutions? I'd presume that these two would the biggest percentage!

iLoveOncall 4y ago

I need 3 monitors or I am crippled, and the god awful alt+tab management of MacOS which is imposed on me contributes a lot to this need. And to be fair, you can tell me anything you want, I will not believe that you are as efficient with a single monitor as with at least 2. I used a single one for 6 months in 2020 and I lost a lot of productivity. Actually I do not believe it to the point that if I was in a position of power over someone who refuses to use more than one, I would get rid of them.

satysin 4y ago
Sounds like you could benefit from AltTab https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/ https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/ It's a free, open source alt+tab replacement for macOS. Highly customisable and works well.
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  Looks good, thanks!
backendEngineer 4y ago
I only have 2 currently at my new job, I have all the logs of services in tmux in 6 to 8 splited panels on 1 screen and IDE on 2nd, I feel as if there is one missing were I can have documentation/wikis/slack/jira etc. I think just using your eyes is faster than managing it on 1 screen but that's just how I'm used to it. Sadly most companies who are not solely into software developing have the same IT setup with 1-2 24 inch screens for the entire company. That's why I'm mostly in home office these days with my 4 screen setup.
sys_64738 4y ago
> Actually I do not believe it to the point that if I was in a position of power over someone who refuses to use more than one, I would get rid of them. You also need to be considerate of other people’s habits. When you typically think that your way is the ‘right way’ then you’re usually wrong.
friend_and_foe 4y ago

6stringmerc 4y ago

Multiple monitors are a force multiplier to Alt+Tab. Yes, I can compile a formal business document from disparate programs and formats all on one screen and there is a bit of an advantage - mouse movement - but that's trivial compared to spatial awareness. Getting something from Excel into PowerPoint while checking Outlook incoming stuff and shooting the cow patties on Teams is a different modus operandi. That's why I relate what I do to being more like an F1 machine than a long-haul key puncher. When I'm on, I'm burning gas and hauling ass. When I'm off, I'm decompressing in ways that are not exactly customary.

bmitc 4y ago

I have a single 40" ultrawide, and I am much, much more productive on it than on laptop screens. I can usually have three or four windows tiled side-by-side, usually with two working code windows and a third for browsing documentation or viewing results or a terminal. It's hard to beat that. The 40" ultrawide format is nice because of the vertical space compared to other ultrawides. It's a 32" monitor with a little extra width. And because it has a built-in KVM, I have a single webcam, keyboard, mouse, and speaker setup for my work and home computers that I can switch between with a keyboard shortcut.

brnewd 4y ago

I was surprised I could be productive coding on a 6.8" Android phone using vscode plus bt mouse and keyboard. Everything depends on viewing distance.

piyh 4y ago

This is the intersection of masochism, minimalism, and technology asceticism.

aeturnum 4y ago

I respect people who really dial in their personal setups and I am also a little at a loss about what to say about these kinds of posts. As the author says - this seems like a highly personal preference that they spent some time and energy getting to. I'm happy for them and fully believe they've found their optimal setup. And, because it's so individual, I am not sure what to do with the post. It's absolutely true - and the author is aware - that end users and developers use their computers in different ways. It's also true that setting up your workspace to be more like an average user will give you some insight* into their situation. Finally it's true that most developers don't do that because they try to optimize their workspaces for their productivity and most people find adding screen real estate does that. I enjoy reading someone else's journal as much as the next person - and I'm always surprised when I see how other people react to pretty personal musings. * This is kind of untrue - statistical outputs are statistically true but they are conjoined with their other qualities. You won't "be in someones shoes" with a low-res screen until you are also sharing their: OS, usecases, application set, etc.

deleted 4y ago

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Nevermark 4y ago

My setup is to have a large 4k tv on the wall beyond my desk, hooked up to both a Mac Studio and Windows PC. That clears my desk, removes my need for reading glasses, makes work legible from anywhere in the room, easy to demo stuff, ... Having the screen on the wall also makes the room feel less cluttered.

steve1977 4y ago
What size is “large”? (just wondering)
- Nevermark 4y ago
  98" 4K LG TV :) Considering I have worked at home my whole career, my only real expenses are my computer equipment, so I tend to always push them. On either side of the 98", I have two 55" in portrait mode. 55" monitors are as long as a 98" is tall. I use the 55" monitors to keep my todo lists and other organizational/motivational info in my face all the time. The setup keeps me producing. I would have got 8k but ... 98" 8k is six figures! O_o

wilsonnb3 4y ago

Doesn't make any sense, this would be like an audio engineer getting rid of their studio monitors and mixing on AirPods because that's what people listen on. What they do instead is use their multi-thousand dollar speaker and room setup for mixing (because it is better!) but then check the end result on airpods, car stereos, etc. Just test on the resolutions you care about, no need to cripple your development setup full time.

1MachineElf 4y ago
>Doesn't make any sense, this would be like an audio engineer getting rid of their studio monitors and mixing on AirPods because that's what people listen on. Skrillex, an EDM producer who became popular about a decade ago, did approximately this. They were iPod headphones back then, not AirPods. Perhaps designing according to the vast majority of users is effective enough?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- connicpu 4y ago
  The trouble with that specifically for audio, if you never test it on anything else you might miss things like crackles that only happen on speakers capable of producing crackles in that frequency range
- louhike 4y ago
  He specifically talked about an audio engineer. Yes as a composer/producer you can get by without audio monitoring hardware if you have an audio engineer taking care of the mixing/mastering after you. Those are different profiles.
- herbst 4y ago
  He took a music genre that you couldn't really listen to except you have semi professional equipment and modified the basses to make them 'hearable' for the masses on cheap equipment or even loud on their phones. I kinda can see that this worked for him. Not sure if that transports well to other producers.

syntheweave 4y ago

I gave up on external monitors a long while ago. When you have to have them, it's indicative of a workflow that needs to be fiddly about the data you're working on, usually either manually monitoring a lot of stuff, or parsing things on one screen(docs) to do things on the other(editors). Some jobs do need it, and I'm not denying that, but if you're doing something where you control more of the environment ground-up and dipping into a variety of digital tools for parts of the workflow, going with paper notebooks and the phone as the second screen can be a lot better; Gridded or dotted 8x5" or A5 spiral notebooks are very convenient for having "enough" visual structure in a document and they aren't particularly more or less constrained than toting around a second monitor. Prop them up on a bookstand so they're at an ergonomic height, and give yourself a color multipen so you can add highlighting and organization by color. Do your tasks by documenting the plan in the book and specific editing functions or build processes you plan to use so that during execution, you have both a plan and a cheat sheet, and it's always in the same place. When you need to share, take a photo.

Always42 4y ago

You do you man, but I like my big monitor :)

asherah 4y ago

to me this reads like the author was simply too frustrated with their wm's handling of large / secondary monitors and post-facto justified the switch to only one monitor

krater23 4y ago
Exactly that. I use 3 monitors, the handling of 3 monitors is really simple compared to one big screen. Thats the only reason I stick at it currently. But I know why I do that.

petarb 4y ago

Web dev here - I use to have three monitors early on in my career. Two side by side and one vertical for a terminal. Then eventually two and now just one large 32” 4k UHD one. Having one has definitely helped me focus better. Left side of the screen is the browser and the right is VSCode with a terminal in the bottom half. It’s my ideal setup as of last 5 years.

husarcik 4y ago
Do you think 32" is ideal size? What about curved? I'm thinking about making the transition to a single monitor too.
- strix_varius 4y ago
  I use a single curved 32" monitor, same setup as above most of the time via window snapping: code/result (UI, test suite, etc) It's my favorite way to work so far. The conclusion in this article seems pretty silly tbh... I'm able to use my large monitor to test multiple browsers and resolutions at once with instant feedback, leading to better responsive designs, delivered faster.
  - bravura 4y ago
    How do you do snapping on OSX? Can you talk more about good one monitor workflows? Do you have workspaces or all windows are in one workspace? Etc
    - cocoa19 4y ago
      Rectangle for snapping: https://rectangleapp.com/ https://rectangleapp.com/
    - strix_varius 4y ago
      Rectangle and other similar apps can provide simple snapping (drag to right edge: snap to right half, drag to NE corner, snap to top right quad, etc). The only time I use workspaces is for things that benefit from huge windows: an editor with tons of files, 3d modeling, etc.

j_kao 4y ago

One area which an external monitor (or high resolution) helps a lot with is UI or frontend programming. It's a huge pain to play with the chrome or Firefox debugger and have to jump between windows to get feedback. When it comes to backend or non-UI work, a laptop is just fine.

grufus 4y ago

[flagged]

seydor 4y ago

Designing for narrow screens is good. Things look better in an average screens, but also on a tablet and on a mobile landscape mode. Small width layouts are always a hassle / unusable.

Ekaros 4y ago
Designing for narrow screens ruins the experience for wide screens. As such it is extremely bad trend to happen. Making daily user experience lot worse for many users.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

Eh. I use one of these: [0]. It’s attached to my 14-inch laptop, but I seldom take that out of its drawer. It allows me to have multiple simulator screens open at once, and I also have an original iPhone SE, that I use for testing, but most of my on-device testing is done, using my iPhone 13 Mini, and my iPad Mini (I also have an iPad Pro 12.9-inch). I find that gives me a good mix. [0] https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-49WL95C-W-ultrawide-monitor https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-49WL95C-W-ultrawide-monito...

bigpeopleareold 4y ago

I only use one monitor, the laptop one. I tend to focus on a single monitor, despite trying to use more screen real estate, but forcing myself to use it has not been productive. The only case it is useful is with side-by-side windows. It hasn't been frequent enough, but now I am thinking that having one of those small side monitors for a laptop screen might be really useful in this case.

d_sem 4y ago

Randy Pausch, a former Computer Science Professor at University of Virginia who passed away from Pancreatic Cancer, gave a popular lecture on Time Manage in the last few months of his illness. In his lecture he proposed a monitor set up I still use today. What I love about this method is that one quickly learned which monitors does what and so there are fewer brain cycles to decide where to put your windows. The Three monitor method: - One for reading. ( documents, reference material, requirements) - One for writing. ( code, writing emails, creating anything) - One for time. (calendar app always open.) He mentions it roughly 49 min into the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blaK_tB_KQA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blaK_tB_KQA

raincole 4y ago
Reading and writing monitors make sense. But I'd definitely not put a monitor just for calender/time. It sounds like a recipe to increase my anxiety leve. I guess because it's a lecture about time management (I haven't listened to it)? But still...
kkoncevicius 4y ago
So in this setup, when you read your email you would put it on the "read" monitor, but when you compose an email you would transfer it over to the "write" monitor?
- diffeomorphism 4y ago
  Why transfer? Writing emails usually opens another window (e.g. outlook, thunderbird etc.), so you have one window for reading and one for writing. Also makes it easier to cross-reference other emails or documents while writing your email.

MandieD 4y ago

I think a lot of user frustration is caused by front end developers having relatively new, well-specced laptops connected to one or more nice monitors, but as the author pointed out, an awful lot of users have 768 x 1366, which usually implies low specs all around, so kudos to this guy for caring for his users in this way. Related tip for developing the visuals for an in-person talk: use a 13” or less laptop to put together and rehearse slides and demos. If it’s readable on that, it should be readable in a big conference room on a mediocre projector.

siva7 4y ago

Let's face it. If Linus Torvalds can work perfectly on a Macbook without external monitors, i don't see any reason why people claim that this must be a very unproductive way of working.

mrweasel 4y ago

Small note, depending on location and situation. If you're in a work situation, not using an external monitor could cause issues for you employer, even if you're working from home. Some countries, like Denmark, have laws that require employees to be given, and use, external monitors, keyboards and pointing devices. For most people being hunched over a laptop for eight hours a day will result in neck, back, and/or wrist pain. Your employer could be fined if you do not use an external monitor. A former coworker of mine had to be repeatedly remind to use the provided equipment. In the end it was agree that everything would sit on his desk, ready to use, in case of a visit from the government office of workplace safety.

IYasha 4y ago
> in case of a visit from the government office of workplace safety. What!? This world is a truly bizarre place.
Symbiote 4y ago
That was my first thought, but there's a clear photo in the article of the laptop on a suitable stand.
- mrweasel 4y ago
  Yes and no. It's on a stand, but it doesn't seem to fulfill the requirements for adjustability. It's not height adjustable and the tilt may be insufficient, at least one way, but excellent the other.
scns 4y ago
There is a whole site dedicated to this phenomenon. I found a presentation about Tech Neck here [0] [0] https://mescforyou.ksc.nasa.gov/Content/RehabWorks/Tech%20Neck%20Final.pdf https://mescforyou.ksc.nasa.gov/Content/RehabWorks/Tech%20Ne... (edit) add link
- Tempest1981 4y ago
  Thanks for that. You can also get it via bad posture at a larger display. It may present as muscle pain, and can require surgery if not corrected. Get your ergonomics right, or you may have regrets years later, when you're older.

nicbou 4y ago

I think that many web developers would benefit from testing on slow hardware, bad monitors and shoddy internet. I work on a 2017 Macbook 12" unless I'm at home. Some websites literally don't work on that resolution. Other websites don't work on hotel Wi-Fi. Others are unreadable on budget laptop screens. It's good to remember that a lot of the world isn't a Silicon Valley office.

badsectoracula 4y ago

> Hell, some of these users were being shown the tablet-based view of the applications since our breakpoints were so ridiculously large. Yikes. I used a 1366x768 monitor on my desktop for a couple of years and this was a huge annoyance - almost every single site assumed that i was on a tablet. Firefox allowed me to "zoom out" the sites which helped somewhat but then pretty much everything was a combination of tiny letters surrounded by tons of empty space. Worse, i remember checking various stat sites at the time and 1366x768 was the most common non-mobile resolution!

alpaca128 4y ago
It also affects people on much larger displays which just want a narrower browser window. So many sites break in random ways (like scrolling not working) or hide important things like the login form when the window isn't wide enough. Clearly many sites are never tested for that. So many years of talking about responsive web frameworks and half the sites simply don't care.

kstenerud 4y ago

I've never really cared much about my physical dev environment setup. I've been programming since 1983, professionally since 1996. There are very few systems I haven't used, ranging from a commodore 64 connected to an old blurry black&white TV to Sun workstations and DEC alphas and SGIs to PCs and laptops of every conceivable size and make to multi-monitor setups, trackballs, trackpads, nubs, mice, standing desks, sitting desks, couch, cross-legged on the floor, in an airplane seat, at the kitchen table... And none of it has ever mattered. As long as I have the software I like and can see what I'm typing or looking up, it's all good. And since most development happens between the ears with the odd short burst of typing, where and how you dump the fruits of your mental labor doesn't make a meaningful enough difference to worry about it.

hamdouni 4y ago
This ! Content > Form, but Form brings attention and alas we are in an attention economy.
tbolt 4y ago
> And since most development happens between the ears with the odd short burst of typing Love it

p4l4g4 4y ago

I maintain the cloud infrastructure at my company and I went the other way around: from laptop only to an 3 screens (laptop on a stand + two screens on the side at a 90 degree angle). When I need a browser window at the right resolution, I just drag it to my laptop screen. The two vertical screens are configured a little different. Vertical screens are terrible for screensharing. For that reason I virtually split one of them in 2 parts (using xrandr). This gives me two square screens that are ideal for screen sharing. So, virtually, I have 4 screens in 3 different sizes and have no issue assigning stuff to them. The vertical screen is always used for Emacs and different chat apps used for work (have a workspace with all chats stacked vertically, so I can keep tabs easily). One of the square screens is used for browsing, while the other is used for screen sharing (or general browsing/terminal when my screen is not shared). The laptop screen is often used as a scratch pad (short term stuff). I know it might be a bit overblown, but it works well for me. I really like the fact that I can run multiple things and monitor their output, without interrupting my workflow.

KronisLV 4y ago

Currently my personal PC is hooked up to four 1080p monitors, each 21.5" because that's all I could reasonably afford to put on my table (monitor costs, VESA mounts/stands for the weight, GPU that can serve that resolution well). This setup works pretty well for most things I might want to do: it works well for recording or streaming because I can use one of them purely for the content that I want to show, while managing OBS/music/notes on other monitors. It also works well for development, because I can look at code and a web browser, as well as have a Git client, terminal or something like docs open all at the same time and switch between those easily. I don't need to worry about overlapping windows or lots of windows on a single monitor, or many tiny tiled windows, or having to manage everything with multiple workspaces - everything is just there, side by side. I can also vaguely organize things by importance, if I feel like it - my development stuff can be front and center (two widescreen monitors atop of one another), some utilities etc. on a vertical monitor to the side, whereas the less important things like e-mail or IM clients etc. to the side further. I'm not saying that using just a laptop screen isn't workable, because it most certainly is, but for my personal approach more monitors is indeed better, at least up to a point. 3 or 4 monitors feels like the sweet spot so far (especially because it isn't too hard to get a GPU that supports them). Pain point: if you ever use Windows and have any of your monitors turned vertically, you'll probably want something like FancyZones for the window snapping to work correctly: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzones https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzon... Also on widescreen displays it seems to me that vertical taskbars work a bit better, which can be problematic in certain OSes (like Windows 11), but isn't much of an issue in others (most Linux distros). If VR resolution was better, it'd be nice to take this layout to the max: having windows in 3D space, using them as a monitor each. A bit like what Safespaces did: https://arcan-fe.com/2018/03/29/safespaces-an-open-source-vr-desktop/ https://arcan-fe.com/2018/03/29/safespaces-an-open-source-vr...

college_physics 4y ago

There might be a distribution of neuronal types (and work requirements) out there but I find small monitors suffocating. Combined with the reduced control of a touchpad versus a mouse and the superior tactile feel of a mechanical keyboard this makes working on laptops a distinctly degraded experience for me.

SwiftyBug 4y ago
I find that the touchpad gives me much more control than a mouse could. I use an external Magic Trackpad on macOS and it's just so natural to use gestures to manage desktops, zoom stuff, show all windows, etc.
- college_physics 4y ago
  For me at least the touchpad feels like a less precise channel that is only attractive due to portability. You never quite know where exactly the pointer will stop when you stop moving your finger (the inertia of the mouse might somehow help with that feeling) We do know what must be objectively the most precise device - what digital artists use to create designs and paintings and its neither a mouse nor a touchpad :-). But it would be interesting to see if people have actually measured this. But indeed there is the more general concept of "control" and in this general sense any multi-touch device that makes use of more fingers opens in principle a larger range of interactions.

gonzo41 4y ago

I'm old, my eye's are going. I did the laptop only thing like the OP for a while and it worked but I was craning my neck forward to see text. Increasing the size of stuff meant less screen so I just kept craning my neck until I hurt it. Anyway, I solved the problem buy going to a single Dell 27inch QHD monitor that has a usbc hub in it. It is amazingly good.

friend_and_foe 4y ago
Laptops are bad for your posture, external, elevated monitors are best. I also like ultrawide monitors, but I do not really think most people need more than one of them.

meling 4y ago

> I'm able to instantly understand frustrations of everyday users while developing new features or tweaking existing UIs. Being able to advocate for our end-users by using legit use cases is extremely helpful. (Removes the "design by gut-feeling" mistakes) This same reasoning could be used in reverse; because designers/devs aren’t using multi-monitor UIs or switch regularly between multi-monitor and laptop-only is why we can’t have a good experience. Like on macOS, why won’t it remember the window size from the last time it was connected to a larger screen.

johnchristopher 4y ago

I also stop using dual monitors when switching to dwm (for 10 minutes) then awesome. Because fiddling with config files to get dual monitors + tags right and adapting to a tiling workflow with two screens was too much to handle for me. And I didn't find much use for the second monitor after a while (mail ? messaging ? it was just an secondary interface to distractions). It made my life easier because I don't have to manage the second monitor ("am I sharing the good screen ?", "why does the main monitor stay in sleep mode ?", etc.). Both laptop and monitor have the same resolution so I keep using the external monitor, it's more comfortable. I am considering an ultra wide monitor though but I have concerns around it being too wide and adding eye or neck fatigue long term.

scbrg 4y ago
> I also stop using dual monitors when switching to dwm (for 10 minutes) then awesome. Because fiddling with config files to get dual monitors + tags right I'm a dwm user with three screens, and there is literally zero extra configuration that's needed to get it working with multiple screens. The three screens have independent tag sets, and it Just Works. My problem is rather the same as the author of the fine article's, that dwm's two column model doesn't fit very wide screens (>2500px) all that well.
- johnchristopher 4y ago
  > I'm a dwm user with three screens, and there is literally zero extra configuration that's needed to get it working with multiple screens. The three screens have independent tag sets, and it Just Works. There's some confusion, I am using awesome, not dwm. I only spent a few dozen minutes with dwm and then switched to awesome but it wasn't because of dual monitor concerns. Though I am also glad I stopped using dual monitor, whatever the DE.
  - scbrg 4y ago
    Sorry, yes, I understood that. But since you mentioned dwm and awesome in the same breath and then went on to complain about configuration headaches I thought it might be worthwhile to point out that dwm actually doesn't suffer from the configuration headaches that apparently come with awesome + multiple monitors. But then, dwm has its own set of other limitations of course (quite a lot of them, in fact) - everything's a tradeoff.

deafpolygon 4y ago

3x27" 4k monitor at 150% scaling seems to be the sweet spot for me. It strikes the balance of text clarity and desktop resolution. I use the center one most of the time, and the one on my right for supporting tasks. My left one monitors stuff (terminals, sysmon, etc.) as well as my music. I use virtual desktops to separate the task I'm working on. I couldn't go back to a single screen, much less 1366x768. I'm often dividing my center and right monitor into vertical splits (supported by Windows snap feature). I tried for a long, long time to use a tiling WM and realized it is just too many compromises in order to use it efficiently. Many applications are not really compatible unless you're willing to switch your entire workflow to using mostly CLI applications. If you're using a dynamic one, you're still moving windows based on priority, and on a regular tiling WM (i.e., i3), you still need to move windows around. Mouse is still the fastest way to resize/move a window. With window snapping, this is more or less a non-issue these days (Windows 11 is still sufficient when it comes to multiple monitors as I'm able to move my window from the right one to my left with Win + Arrow). I can still alt-tab. I can't use a 40" 4k screen because it's too large, and it's more about division of screens than resolution alone. I also like the improved clarity that 150% scaling brings me on a 27" screen.

mrjin 4y ago

I guess I'm bored enough to reply to this. Different people have different needs, end of story.

ehnto 4y ago

I switched from dual monitor to a single 2560x1440/quad HD monitor when I switched to using the i3 tiling window. manager. I think I can picture the issue they ran into with a 4k monitor, but I do not have that issue at QHD. It's enough width to display a document or narrow browser window next to my IDE and a couple of terminals beneath the IDE. Ideal setup for me personally.

mekpro 4y ago

To me, the real benefit of an external monitor is not the display size, but the height and position. Compared to a laptop-on-table setup, an external display allows the screen to be positioned higher to match the height of the eyes, while also keeping the keyboard lower to match the height of the arms. This makes working for extended periods more comfortable and reduces shoulder and neck pain. When I cannot afford an external display, I have found that using a laptop stand and an external keyboard can help a lot.

onion2k 4y ago

When I was a kid in the 1980s I really wanted to draw comics for a living. I spent ages sat at the family dining room table pouring my heart into little comic strips like the ones in my favorite comic books. I'd try so hard to draw as well as the artists I admired but I could never quite get there. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't match the level of detail, clarity, and expression they did. When I was older I learned that comic books are drawn on much bigger paper than the comic. Part of the production process is to shrink the drawings to comic book size. Drawing bigger comics is a lot easier. I was trying to draw the comic and mimic the rest of the production process as well. The same is true for dev work. Constraining yourself to what the end user has is throwing away a ton of benefits from having access to better tools. By all means test your work on a similar machine but don't throw up artificial barriers to doing good work if you don't need to. You're just trying to go straight to the final version. That doesn't work.

gala8y 4y ago
Very good metaphor.
nicbou 4y ago
On the other hand, you have to get a feel for how the web is like for your users. Maybe your website runs well on a dev machine with a fibre internet connection and an ad blocker on DEFCON 1, but what about your users on budget laptops with crappy screens? Or what about people with crappy wi-fi?
- helmholtz 4y ago
  What do you think GP meant with "By all means test your work on a similar machine..."
  - nicbou 4y ago
    It's not just about testing your own software for a few minutes, but really experiencing the web as one of your users.
4y ago

lovetocode 4y ago

I tried this as well for about 8 months and ended up going back to an external monitor setup. Why? Health reasons. The ergonomics of using a laptop everyday is detrimental to your posture. Being hunched over and looking down at a laptop all day is not healthy. You can still have bad posture with an external monitor but now these risks are avoidable if you are disciplined enough. With a laptop you really have no choice but to have poor posture.

jlarcombe 4y ago
laptop stand + external keyboard / mouse / trackpad
- cassepipe 4y ago
  Just as they show a in the blog post
  - jlarcombe 4y ago
    Yeah. I do this, though I sometimes use an extra monitor depending on what I'm doing. The screen on the 16" Mac Book Pro is much nicer to look at all day than any reasonably priced external screen, and I find I tend to get a bit "dizzied" by enormous screens right in front of me.
- lovetocode 4y ago
  I couldn't imagine this being healthy for your eye sight.
  - jlarcombe 4y ago
    what?

chiefalchemist 4y ago

> while a large portion of my end-users would never benefit from those "pixel-perfect" designs. Slightly off-topic but this is precisely why people need to stop saying pixel-perfect. It doesn't exist anymore than Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, or an honest politician. At the extreme, two users with the same hardware have the resolution set differently, might use different browsers and/or have different zoom settings in the browser. Saying pixel-perfect is at this point like saying, "fax it to me."

nateburke 4y ago

Eye motion has a cognitive cost. If I can take that eye motion and move it into my fingers' muscle memory to toggle screens, there is an increase in overall focus. I find an external or secondary monitor is good for large refactors across multiple repos, but that's a small slice of my typical book of work. Most of the time it's just distracting to have extra reasons to move my eyes and head. If I need a break, I go outside and look at far away things.

NovemberWhiskey 4y ago

Since Zoom became a thing, I can't imagine having to work with just a single smaller screen. I need to have enough real-estate to be able to multi-task someone sharing a desktop full-screen on Zoom legibly along with at least two of email, IM and IDE.

cassepipe 4y ago

I have been using a 15 inches laptop for coding for 4 years now and splitting the screen whether in vim or having two windows next to each other does not make for a great experience. Rather than buying a separate screen and having one more thing to manage I remapped Super + J and Super + K in Cinnamon to just switch windows instantly. Sometimes I even use Super + $number to get to a specific window. I think it works fine and it's more resilient: I can code when I don't have an extra screen

osigurdson 4y ago

>> I no longer have to worry about "context switching" if I decide to un-dock my laptop and work somewhere mobile. It does make sense to optimize for the lowest common denominator if working away from a desk often. However, that would also mean foregoing the external keyboard and mouse imo. TP keyboards are pretty good and the "nub" is better than a mouse in some ways (though seems to cause hurt finger after a while). I still prefer an external mechanical kb, mouse and big monitor but I get where the OP is coming from.

notacoward 4y ago
> that would also mean foregoing the external keyboard and mouse imo Didn't work that way for me. An external keyboard and mouse (or trackpad) is easy enough to stick in your luggage and take through an airport. A monitor - especially a large one - is much less so. For the years that I traveled one week a month, I generally avoided hooking up to external monitors even when they were available at my destination because I didn't want to manage two different layouts or workflows. YMMV, of course, but I think "keyboard and mouse but not monitor when away from home base" is a reasonable and quite common compromise.
- osigurdson 4y ago
  I guess it depends on how mobile your workflow is. Hard to use an external kb on a plane or at a coffee shop. Maybe Zuck will solve these problems for use with his glasses. Crossing fingers.
- osigurdson 4y ago
  Also, I noticed that there are pretty cheap portable monitors out there - mostly from unknown brands however. Pretty sure you could pack these in a bag.
  - IYasha 4y ago
    There are strap-on foldable side-monitors for laptops out there. But they still use HDMI and USB ports.

hk1337 4y ago

I do use the external and multi monitor setup. I tried for awhile having them side by side but it didn’t work having to look slightly left or right all the time. I’ve tried working from just the laptop and it’s fine for awhile but not long term. Now, I have my laptop open on a stand with Keepass full screen on one side, all my communications (outlook, zoom, slack) on the right, and all my focus items in the center. We’ll see how long that lasts.

BrotherBisquick 4y ago

To everyone providing testimony such as "I don't use an external monitor and I'm fine" (or not), please mention whether you're using a laptop stand and/or separate keyboard/mouse.

cjonas 4y ago

I've been working (software) on only my mbp for the last few years and haven't seen any real impact to my productivity. You just get more efficient at navigating a small space. It's nice to not feel like I'm missing anything when working in coffee shops or on workcation trips.

BeFlatXIII 4y ago

But why 1366x768 and not something with retina densities?

IYasha 4y ago
Because, well, manufacturers did not leave us a choice? (* I'd go for 1280*800)

rldjbpin 4y ago

i've personally stuck with using a 15" laptop screen thus far (and a smaller one at work during pandemic). this has been mostly out of necessity of moving around and the personal motto of not hoarding stuff when you would have to get rid of it in a few months. while i'd love to give a secondary monitor a go, even when i'd use multiple monitors at work, it would not automatically become a huge productivity boost that most people swear by. one "big enough" screen has done just fine. even our brain zones out the visual feed outside of what's in front of you, so you are only saving tabbing shortcuts when working with more than one display. so much for those swearing by keyboard shortcuts and vim dotfiles.

friend_and_foe 4y ago

I get the graphic designer specific reasons, but I've noticed the same sort of trend in myself upon switching to a tiling wm. The truth is you just don't need multiple monitors with a tiling wm. Space gets wasted in a normal stacking window managers, and you have to manually and meticulously lay your windows out. Most people don't have the patience and just full screen everything. Having layouts optimized automatically, or with a few quick key presses makes things easier, and you wind up actually using multiple workspaces. Switching workspaces is easier than looking around at different monitors. I do believe that people that use multiple monitors are either showing off or could benefit greatly from tiling window managers, because they'd spend less money on monitors, and less e waste and all that. Very few people have needs that actually demand multiple monitors, a fraction of the number of people that have them.